Squad

 

   AI image, prompted by me

There are plenty of reasons to abolish the death penalty, not the least of which is the number of incarcerated people found, after years in prison, to have been wrongly convicted. And that horror show in Tennessee. If it’s ever appropriate, however, the mass murders committed by Nidal Hasan would be a justification. It’s best left to states, though. Our federal government has been murdering innocent US citizens on our streets, without regret. It’s not their job.

Which brings us to the preening, unqualified, self-sexualizing talk show host in actual charge of our actual military, trying to butch up after years sitting on his butt in a comfy Fox studio. With Trump’s approval, he’s resurrected death by firing squad. Shooting a blindfolded man in a wheelchair seems something he’s brave enough to do. He’ll find enough testosteriacal soldiers to join in. Not the kind I served with, though. Decent men and women, all. Trump kiboshed the livestream, though, about which DHS Secretary Mullin said livestreaming it is “part of restoring American values.” His. Hegseth’s and Miller’s and Patel’s. Along with Trump, America’s exemplars to the rest of the world. Trump did, however, mock a man killed by a tiger and posted an AI image of himself beating the tiger. What kind of person...

He’s a “president” who swats away our Constitution like bugs at a picnic. In the latest, he ignored court orders to stop using taxpayer money for self-promoting political ads, then had several hundred trees on D.C. property knocked down after a judge ordered him not to. Beautiful things threaten Trump, so he focuses on creating ugliness. It’s the one thing he’s preternaturally good at. Gilded ballrooms, glowering arches, leading chants of USA!, USA!, USA!, after a rally-goer punched a protester in the face. As opposed to this.

In charge, for now, is a once-credible political party, given over to MAGAfied authoritarianism. It continuously and falsely accuses prior presidents of weaponizing government while doing exactly that. Encourages a “president” who weaponizes a debased Department of Injustice against political foes. His raid on the home of Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), right before the election, for the crime of legislating while Muslim, about which Fox “news” was tipped off in advance, confirming its cynically political motive, debased us all. Unlike the raid on Mar-a-Lago, occasioned by Trump stealing classified documents, admitting it, refusing to hand them over, ignoring a subpoena, and lying about what he returned. Federal crimes, committed openly.

Having broken every pre-election 2024 promise, Trump has nothing positive to tout at his current formulaic, tired rallies. So he lies about communist Dumocrats (Brilliantly clever name, that. He discovered the “b” and left it out because his uncle taught at MIT) and their plans to change your children’s gender. In school. Or, as Matt Gaetz, his original choice for Attorney General verbed it, “trans” them.

When attending medical school in Cleveland for four years, I rooted for their teams. Now I hate watching them, as networks air darkened lies about Sherrod Brown, falsely implying he’s a transer, too. Has anyone seen a Republican political ad anywhere, for anyone, promoting a positive agenda? They have none. And they’re stuck with Trump.

As bad as things are under Trump and his contemptible claque, they’d be worse if they were competent. Following their senatorial embarrassment via Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) humiliation as he botcheda gotcheda toward Jack Smith, mistaking Iowa Hawkeyes for Atlanta Hawks and who cares where he was that night anyway, they’ve stepped on the same rake with Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico. Claimed by his opponent, a person as deplorable as Trump if you can believe it, spread enthusiastically by Elon Musk, fresh off donating over $300 million to Republicans, and believed by every decerebrated MAGA, they lied he’d spent ten days in an Ohio mental institution. That desperate fiction was debunked faster than Q-Anon’s “revelation” of Hillary Clinton trafficking children from the basement of a pizza parlor lacking a basement but which Trump’s new qualified-by-bleach-and-grovel press secretary promoted back then.

Capping off the week was Trump’s “deal” with Putin to spend our money buying Russia’s diesel fuel. Since it amounts to but a few days’ worth of America’s usage, the significance is, yet again, Trump’s buttosculation of Vlad; freeing him from sanctions, breaking the bipartisan law against importing Russian fuel he’d just signed. At least he’s stopped all pretense of not being Putin’s puppy. Openly colluding with him. Praising his favorite murderer and insulting a fledgling democracy’s brave president. Blaming Ukraine for Russia’s criminal invasion. Saying its president, not Putin, must stop the war. If he did, Ukraine would cease to be, handing it to Russia; if Putin stopped it, nothing would happen except universal relief. Same if Trump stopped his stupid Iran war.

As November’s elections approach, Trump is desperate to undo the economic damage his war has caused. Hallucinating or lying (which is worse?), he announced an agreement between the parties to stop attacking energy sources. It was news to Zelensky, and Putin is still bombing them. Having nothing constructive to offer, for Trump and his candidates, it’s lies all the way down.

Standoff

 

                        AI-prompted image

Here’s reason number 48, which is one past 47, why America needs to join the rest of the civilized world and provide single-payer, universal healthcare for its citizens. But first, let’s dispense with pre-programmed responses:

One: Unless the government were to take over every hospital, clinic, and pharmacy, and unless it were to employ every doctor, nurse, and other providers of health-related care, which NO ONE is proposing, it would not, by definition, be socialism. Caregivers and hospitals could remain independent.

Two: Yes, taxes would certainly be raised, presumably on a sliding scale, but insurance premiums would disappear. And, by eliminating enormous and unnecessary costs interposed by insurers between providers and patients, it might even break even. The total amount of health insurance premiums Americans pay is around $1.5 trillion!

Three: Government takeover. Assuming we retain fair elections, we can elect legislators who’ll keep it patient-oriented.

Now to the issue: Thousands of area seniors and tens of thousands more elsewhere in Washington and Oregon enrolled in United Health Care Medicare Advantage programs will, after January 1, no longer have access to Providence-owned hospitals. As reported in the Herald, and as members learned in mailings from UHC, the Sisters have announced they’ll no longer accept those plans. At the moment, other than downgrading to “regular” Medicare, which the Sisters will accept, or traveling miles to other facilities, UHC customers must find and sign up with other plans that the hospital and their physicians will accept. Which, for old folks like me, can be daunting.

Health insurance companies provide no care, much less value. But they suck up billions of our healthcare dollars, disappearing them into the pockets of administrators and stockholders, paying employees, buying back stock, and other corporate expenses. Quoted in the Herald article, UHC’s explanation is priceless: “... [W]e must make decisions that help maintain long-term viability and access.” Right. Maintain access by reducing it. Maintain viability by cutting reimbursement so much that hospitals can’t afford to do business.

Our predicament was occasioned by Providence’s decision to stop accepting UHC Medicare plans. As a former partner and board member of the late-lamented Everett Clinic, I sympathize. We faced continual, increasingly unworkable decreases in reimbursement from insurers. In a case that made national news, we fired one whose proposed cuts would have cost us to deal with them; sent announcements to affected patients, and helped them find alternatives. Since we were large enough, desired enough, and had enough patients to make a difference, the company backed down. Whether Providence’s move will have similar results seems unlikely. Time is running short to change Medicare plans, and United Health Care, with tens of millions of enrollees nationally, needn’t care about several thousand. Here’s an example.

UHC is the insurance component of United Health Group, which includes UHC and Optum, which, in turn, owns physician practices, pharmacies, and other services. In 2025, UHG took in about $448 billion and paid out $314 billion to providers of care. The rest went to multiple overhead costs, including $1million in salary and $60 million in stock for its CEO, and profits distributed to investors. That’s around $130 billion not spent on healthcare.

There are hundreds of health insurance providers in the US, huge and small, similarly taking money away from actual care. In addition are the enormous costs to providers in dealing with them; costs far lower were there only one payer. Mega-billions of healthcare-intended dollars, disappearing into a cosmic void.

It’s a hugely complex system, which, rather than providing otherwise unobtainable benefits, stands between patients and providers. Imagine paying someone to hand you groceries before you pay the cashier. What’s happening with Providence and UHC shows how at the mercy of an irrational system we are, and how vulnerable to their business decisions.

Providence is communicating with patients who use their network physicians. Here’s a link to plans they’ll accept. Optum, so far, has been silent; perhaps because, as a major profit center for UHC, helping is a conflict of interest. Maybe local branches will commune with their Everett Clinic ancestry and offer assistance in making the change. And then, we’ll hope the need won’t happen again. (The care we get at Optum is outstanding. We don’t intend to change.)

Surely, many UHC subscribers have, heretofore, considered universal healthcare communism or socialism or some other ill-defined anathema. Maybe a rethink is in order. As long as Republicans retain control, universal healthcare won’t happen. Nor, if it were ever enacted, would it be problem-free; it’s a monstrous beast. But it’s doable, especially if a Trumpless America reorders priorities.

In the before times, we solved problems rather than creating them. Notwithstanding the current administration, America retains the expertise and means to make it work. A good start would be undoing Trump’s deficit-increasing, wealthy-benefitting tax cuts. Without risking security, we could reduce Hegsethified military spending. In the age of drone- and missile-based warfare, we could definitely do without useless “Trump-class” battleships. We could even stop unprovoked invasions of other countries. Our nation would become healthy in more ways than one.

Commie Lover

                                        Image created using AI

“America will never be a communist country,” Trump says with words. ‘But I will grovel before the world’s communist dictators and do all I can to emulate them, while giving them whatever they want,’ says he with actions. Figuratively belly-up like a dog submitting to its alpha male, Trump, as no president had done for decades, made a pilgrimage to Andrews AFB to stand below Xi as he exited his plane, to walk on a red carpet cleaned by American troops on their knees, while Chinese diplomats looked on. 

Then he honored the dictator, the man providing weapons and other support to Iran for use against America in Trump’s stupid war, with a White House ceremony on the South Lawn involving more than 400 military personnel, both national anthems, a military review, and a flyover by a B-2 bomber and four F-22 Raptors, the latter of which kinda scared our “president” as he saluted the Chinese anthem while Xi didn’t.

It was supplication akin to what he’d previously orchestrated for “President” Putin, in Alaska. The “president” of the United States lowered himself before a dictator actively aiding our enemy and another actively attacking our friend. And, because he’s blinded by all-consuming jealousy of President Barack Obama and, in his role as HOTUS (no need to guess what the H stands for), he put on the most lavish state dinner for Xi, having, years ago, blasted BHO for doing the same. 

Last week’s column mentioned Trump banning mainstream media from the White House, immediately struck down, on Constitutional grounds, by a Trump-appointed federal judge. Over the weekend, Attorney General Todd Blanche, sworn to defend the Constitution and the rights of American citizens but not, as he does, to excuse Trump’s lawlessness, lied that the ban hadn’t been a ban, and denied that Trump described it as such, which he had. How dutiful are Trump’s appointees, no matter the needs of our country.

Laughably, after the courts reminded him of the Constitution, Trump went on to say, “CNN shouldn’t be allowed into the sacred White House.” Sacred! So sacred does he hold it that he illegally took a wrecking ball to it, intent on desecrating it with a monstrosity, a tastelessly towering, gilded, and, as it turns out, unsafe ballroom. To Trump, nothing is sacred but his own gratification and greed. Certainly not American law or its foundational tenets, or the honorable obligations of his office.

Not laughable is the clearly illegal, self-promoting television ad Trump has been running; illegal because it was paid for by our tax dollars, bannered as such, proudly. But it’s not just about confirming his dictatorial dismissal of American law, which is bad enough. It’s about its chilling content: Walking down a dark hall, scowling like his post-arrest mugshot, he warns, “With you at my side we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.” 

That’s exactly that mendacious, undemocratic authoritarianism that animates the straggling still-approvers; but to anyone who actually loves America as aspired to by our founders, it’s sickening. Close your eyes, and you’ll hear Mussolini. Open them, and see a straight-arm-saluting and hateful cult. Watch newly-launched “Trump TV,” managed by the White House and, therefore, paid for by us, and imagine it in Russian, Chinese, or Korean.

What our country has become under Trump isn’t America, and it’s far from certain it retains the will to do the work to make its way back. If many of us consider ourselves separate from what it now is, can the rest of the world also separate America from Trump, believe it to be a one-off malfunction that will, as long as we continue to have free and fair elections, self-correct?

The thing is, “we” elected him. Within our constitutional system, conceived, in large part, to prevent a Trump from descending to power, it happened. For exposing the weakness of a Constitution that presupposes virtuous politicians and reasonably educated citizens, we owe him embittered thanks. But now, with limitless money from an unimaginably wealthy and selfish American oligarchy controlling what people see and hear, who can say it’s reversible? It was the inevitable result of compromised courts, cowardly Congressdwellers, and shamelessly propagandistic, dishonest media. America has let itself and the world down, and may no longer have the means to lift itself back up.

For a sobering view of the worldwide impact of Trumpism, spend a few moments watching this video, from Rufus Gifford, Ambassador to Denmark under presidents Obama and Biden. These links are ignored by many, but this one is worth a click. In it, he analogizes a heartbroken person finding, with great sadness, that their best and most trusted friend is stabbing them in the back.